A Guide to Dry Dog & Cat Food : Australia

Whiskas has to be the most well known brand of cat food. It’s been around for ever. But is it any good? Read on to find out…

This review is for the Beef & Lamb Flavour recipe, but the other dry foods in the range are formulated exactly the same – go on, take a look! So even before we look at the ingredients we’ve discovered our first marketing trick. They’re not selling different recipes, they’re selling the same recipe in different bags, just with a different flavouring sachet.

Let’s consider cats for a moment. In the simplest of terms, cats are carnivores, their diet should be meat. The Number 1 ingredient in Whiskas is wholegrain cereals. What? We’ve fallen at the first hurdle! There’s a single factual reason why a cat food manufacturer would sell a diet comprised mostly of cereal grains, and that’s profit. It’s not for the well being of your much loved pet. They’re putting profit before your pet, which doesn’t sound very ethical does it?

A cereal diet is rubbish for a cat. Their digestive system is designed to digest meats, not grains. Even as far as grains go this isn’t a decent ingredient. They don’t state what type of cereals, so I pretty much guarantee it will be a mixture of dirt cheap grains like wheat, corn, sorghum, and rice. Waste products.

Thankfully we find a meat ingredient in the Number 2 spot, but it’s not decent meat. It’s meat from a rendering plant. What we’re looking at here is minced up “animals” sold as cheap slop. Quality control isn’t a factor here, so we find anything from diseased animals (tumours intact) to waste meat from other industries to roadkill. Again, profit is the only reason for this ingredient.

Next up we find another cereal ingredient, cereal protein. The protein percentage of the food is 26% which is low for a cat food, and the presence of this ingredient shows they’re hiding a lack of quality meat proteins with a protein source your cat can’t digest.

Poultry digest is another product from the rendering plant. It’s a broth that comes off the animals when they’re cooked up. It’s nasty stuff, but will otherwise give a bland tasting cereal food some flavour.

I’ll finish this review by mentioning the last ingredient on your list. Question yourself, why would your cat care about food colourings?

This is a lousy food low in protein, high in carbs, and low in anything worthwhile.

If this has helped you please take the time to share it to other Australian pet owners. Thank you 🙂

Where to buy?

Guaranteed Analysis

* Carbohydrates aren’t listed on pet food labels. This value is calculated based on levels of protein, fat, moisture, and ash. Estimated values for moisture and ash have been used where these values haven’t been given (moisture of 10%, and ash of 8%).